Gamble
by Regann
Summary: Luck was Jounouchi's strength, like his heart was his weakness. Both required him to be a gambler, though, and he never disappointed them. Jounouchi takes a gamble. Joukai.


**Gambler**

by Regann

_deal it._

Despite what they said about him, Jounouchi Katsuya wasn't dumb; he might not have cracked many books, but he could do other things like change spark plugs, or land a heavy right hook on a guy twice his size; and, if he was in the mind for it, he could drink anybody under the table, even though he'd pay for it the next day.

Jounouchi wasn't dumb, but sometimes Kaiba made him feel that way. Not because Kaiba was so smart -- even though he was -- but because Jounouchi couldn't understand him, no matter how much he tried.

Another thing Jounouchi was good at was feeling. He _felt_ so many things he couldn't say, couldn't do, couldn't think about. But it was there, beating in his chest, making him hurt in a way he didn't have words for. When it was Shizuka who gave him that feeling, he called it love; when it was Yuugi, he called it friendship; when it was Kaiba ---

He didn't have a word for it past "confusion."

Sometimes when he got into that Zen state that came upon teenage boys when they were working on cars or working on a particularly long sequence of the newest hack-and-slash game to make its way to his home from the Kame Game shop, Jounouchi would puzzle on it, roll Kaiba around in his head like a bad penny or a bad thought. Both were apt because he couldn't keep Kaiba out of his head. Even in his own mind, he couldn't beat Kaiba and, damn, was that frustrating or what?

The problem -- Jounouchi decided one day, as he doodled on his notebook while he waited for detention to end -- was that he knew _too much_ about Kaiba Seto. When he'd only had a few pieces of info, he'd been easy to classify as a bastard and stuff into that cubbyhole where Jounouchi kept lists of people whose asses needed kicking. Then shit happened and he couldn't keep Kaiba out from under his feet when he was helping Yuugi or when Yuugi was helping him. So Jounouchi learned more about Kaiba bit-by-bit, completely under duress and bitching about it all the way. Because the last thing he'd wanted was for Kaiba to even resemble a human --- he liked him as something more like a machine or a sleazy downtown lawyer and less like one of them, just a kid who had issues of his own.

But then there'd been Mokuba and Duelist Kindgom and that stupid ass dream _and_ the Big 5 and their dumbass virtual reality and Jounouchi had been faced by tiny slivers of Kaiba's humanity every time he glanced up, where they burrowed into his mind like irritating eyelashes in his eyes and no matter how much he rubbed, he couldn't get them -- him -- out of there.

Even with those slivers, though, Kaiba wasn't any less annoying or stupid or _irritating_. He was more, not less, if he was anything -- because Jounouchi couldn't truly dismiss someone who loved his brother the way Kaiba did, or who could look as helpless as Kaiba had tied to that cross in Virtual-Land, or who could look so damn broken when he shifted his eyes just right way.

Jounouchi's weakness was his big heart; Kaiba exploited it, however unknowingly or unwillingly, until one day he was an ache in there beside Shizuki and Yuugi and Honda, until he had meaning that Jounouchi couldn't quite say but that he could feel all the way into his bones and out again until his skin oozed with it.

And that, like nothing else Kaiba ever did, pissed Jounouchi off.

Jounouchi might not have been as dumb as they all said but he was as brave --- reckless, Yuugi called it; stupid, said Honda -- as they thought. He didn't run, he didn't back down and definitely didn't hide. Not even from things he didn't know how to say or from Kaiba Seto, the richest and meanest kid of his acquaintance. Instead he made plans; not like he might have planned a local beat-down or a night with friends but with the usual, careless certainty that he played cards. That certainty might have been arrogance in others but Jounouchi was too humble for that, no matter how many boasts he made. He knew Lady Luck loved him and he used her shamelessly but he always gave her thanks and she always smiled on him again.

Not even Kaiba had Jounouchi's luck. It was one thing that he had that no one else could claim. Luck was Jounouchi's strength, like his heart was his weakness. Both required him to be a gambler, though, and he never disappointed them.

Armed with bits and pieces of Kaiba and half-formed ideas and sideway glances and strange moments that never made sense and dozens of other Kaiba-snippets his mind kept up with, Jounouchi took his plan and did what he did best.

Jounouchi was always better with action than he was with thinking. It was one of the reasons that they called him dumb and called him reckless. In his not-so-mighty opinion, it just _was_.

Jounouchi Katsuya waited around the corner for Kaiba Seto to round it and grabbed him by surprise; he roughly yanked him into the shadows and shoved him against the wall, despite Kaiba's cool eyes and dangerous voice, despite the fact that nice leather of Kaiba's white coat slid under Jounouchi's dirty, sweat-slick palms.

And then when Kaiba was trapped and snarling and being his usual self, Jounouchi kissed him, cutting off air and threats with chapped, tobacco-stained lips and a sloppy, enthusiastic tongue, all push and clumsiness and gawky, reckless strength. He kissed him with everything he knew, all the slivers and bits and faded recollections, looking for answers in the way Kaiba stiffened and his muscles bunched, in the way that his tongue moved over his. Kaiba wasn't push as much as he was shove and he wasn't strength as much as he was power. But they met somewhere in the middle of it all, bits and pieces and feelings and thoughts slamming together the way their teeth clashed, grasping and straining and searching the way that their hands did.

Although Jounouchi would never admit it to anyone but the goddess he talked to sometimes when his mind and his heart were too full to sleep, in all the frenzied, graceless movement, those pieces and parts of Kaiba he had buried in his head came together, sliding and slipping until they painted a picture in his mind. There was triumph in it, and understanding and words began to pile up, all the words he hadn't been able to find before.

He'd never felt anything like it, not in his whole entire life; Jounouchi figured it must have been how Yuugi had felt when he'd solved the Millennium Puzzle.

Jounouchi Katsuya walked away from Kaiba with his puzzle all solved, everything named and fitted and placed in the appropriate slots. There was something to call that ache in his chest; something like lust, or maybe attraction -- Jounouchi's mind was still catching up. But he was sure it was connected to words like horny and sex and screw; he could always figure out the order later.

As he walked away, Jounouchi knew his puzzle was solved.

But Kaiba still had his own pieces to put together.

And even a hothead like Jounouchi knew you had to wait for the payoff sometimes; that was the price of a good gamble.

_call._


End file.
